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“Sit down, young man,” he said.

I sat.

The chair was low. I understood at once that this was deliberate. It put my eyes a little below his, and made the desk loom, and turned an ordinary interview into an audience. I have sat in worse chairs before worse men. I folded my hands and waited.

For a long time, my host did not speak.

He looked at me, and I looked back, while the clock ticked. Somewhere in the house a door closed, and a girl’s voice said something rapid and furious, and another voice answered, low and pleased.

“Let me tell you one thing you do not know,” said Richard Pendleton.

“Please.”

“I love my son.”

I said nothing.

“I can go to any length to keep him happy and protected. Any length. Do you understand? I have done things you would not believe. I have made phone calls. I have written checks. I have sat in a car outside a hospital at three in the morning, waiting for a doctor to tell me if a boy of nineteen was going to walk again.” He did not raise his voice. “I say this so that you understand what you are dealing with.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” He leaned back. “All this time, I believed that Alexander was a normal child. I watched him. He loved girls. He changed them like shirts. He broke a great many hearts, and each time I thought: well. He will settle. It is a phase. I never once expected to sit in my own study and discuss my son with a man who wants to marry him.”

“It was not my intention to surprise you.”

“You have failed.”

“I am sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He drew a folder toward him, glanced at it, and pushed it away. “I am not a fool, Mr. Volkov. I have had you looked into.”

“I expected it.”

“You have no address in Russia. You have no birth record. Your accounts are held through a series of shell companies that go back, I believe, to the eighteenth century.” His eyes were sharp and pale. “You appear to have been very rich for a very long time. And you appear to have been very careful not to be seen.”

I did not answer.

“I do not ask what you are,” said Richard Pendleton. “I have my suspicions. I choose not to entertain them. I am a practical man. I only wish to know one thing.”

“Ask.”

“Are you good to him?”

The clock ticked.

I have been asked many questions in my life. By priests and inquisitors, by kings and by the dying. No one had ever asked me that one so simply.

“I try to be,” I said. “Every day.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only honest one.” I met his eyes. “I will make mistakes. I have already made one that nearly cost him his life. I cannot promise that I will never fail him. But I can promise that I will never stop trying to make it right. And I can promise that I will never leave.”

“Promises are cheap.”

“Yes. Mine are not.”

He said nothing.